Day 16: Mentally adrift.

This was a slooooow day.

Emma joined me for a lecture by ITV journalist Ken Rees on the real pirates of the Caribbean. Apparently Johnny Depp isn’t a real pirate – go figure – although we learned he once responded to a letter from a young girl asking about pirates by showing up at her school in full costume with three cast members. How cool is that?

I still attended my Spanish class. According to Luz, my Colombian-born and raised instructor, my accent is excellent, although she may just be feeling sorry for the overly keen but linguistically-challenged gringo from Sydney. The days are blurring together: when Luz asked me “¿qué fecha es hoy?” (what is the date today?) I looked at her blankly and said “I have absolutely no idea”.

However I skipped the afternoon lecture and didn’t make it to gym. I did find time to read, and I have to say I’m loving my Kindle e-reader.

Quite a few of the guests onboard have e-readers besides Emma and I. Perhaps a quarter of the guests have e-readers: Kindles, Nooks, Kobos, Sony, whatever. It’s a bit surprising given the age demographics of the ship. On the other hand given the income demographics many of these people can afford any toy that catches their fancy.

In any case having a wide selection to choose from depending on mood is very handy, be it an Edgar Rice Burroughs pulp novel like “Thuvia, Maid of Mars”, a Spanish phrasebook, an anthology of Buddhist discourses from the Pali Canon, a collection of Sudoku puzzles, Derren Brown’s book “Tricks of the Mind” on mentalism, magic tricks and how to mess with peoples’ heads, or the Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, to mention some of the books I’ve been reading.

It’s also brilliant for buying books. When we were in Philadelphia I saw Joseph J. Ellis’ book “American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic” in the Valley Forge gift shop. I didn’t want to pick it up there because it was a rather hefty hardback, and I thought it might be available on amazon.com. When I returned to the ship I turned on my Kindle’s 3G connection and sure enough it was available for download for $7.53, instead of $27 for the hardback. In less than a minute I’d bought it and downloaded it to my Kindle.

Sweet.

Lunch was an Asian buffet. One of the dishes was virtually untouched. I wonder why…

It was supposed to say “lychees”. We hope.

That night’s entertainment was four young award-winning performers in their early 20s perform in the Avenue Bar: jazz double-bassist Garret Lang, jazz percussionist Max Wrightson, singer Kelsey Porter, and our personal favourite, tap-dancer/singer Melinda Sullivan, who radiates “star quality”.

Then I read some more. You can’t have too much high-brow intellectual stiumlation while on holiday.